All-Ireland SFC Semi-final/Armagh v Tyrone: Tom Humphries hears from trainer John McCloskey how the Ulster kingpins will even bring their own baths to Croke Park

John McCloskey went back to school this week. Somebody told him once that everybody should have three careers in their lifetime. Three careers. Three chapters. He feels his finger on the corner of the page, itching for the turning.

His teaching career and his coaching career have overlapped for some time now. He loves the rhythms of the school year, the pliability of tender minds, but he is wondering, not for the first time, if it's not time to turn the page. Somewhere along the way a subplot of his life grew out of control and started making up its own narrative and introducing its own fantastic characters.

Tomorrow he'll sit in Croke Park amid the unrivalled babel of Northern GAA folk and watch Armagh, the most extraordinarily honed and chiselled and conditioned team in GAA history, go about their business.

Much can be (and has been) said about the style of football Armagh will bring to the party, but three things have to be conceded at the outset.

One. It may be a gruelling style to inflict on opponents but it's a gruelling style to play as well. Armagh are physically perfect and physically relentless. They drain themselves every time they go on to the pitch.

Since losing to Wexford on February 6th they are unbeaten in 15 competitive games, almost half of them summer championship battles.

Two. Whether you regard Armagh as an abomination or a revelation doesn't really matter. They can play football. They can stop you playing football. Either or both. Against Laois a couple of weeks back, against Donegal last summer, against Dublin in 2002, against any team when they are in the mood, they can be intoxicating and dizzying to watch.

Three. Armagh aren't just the most complete and driven side we have seen in the last couple of decades, they are the most imperishable. They have asked, though, that we measure them and their worth in units of Sam Maguire rather than units of Anglo-Celt and thus we tend to forget the astonishing achievement which is five Ulster titles in the last six years. It's not so long ago we regarded the Ulster title as virtually unretainable.

And through it all McCloskey's fingerprints are detectable for those who want to look. In a game which has changed quickly and dramatically in less than a decade, McCloskey has been out there on the edge of the learning curve as Armagh have upped the stakes in terms of preparation.

Before he talks he offers a caveat. A backdoor. Memories of Fermanagh last summer still haunt him. "The thing about all this is: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. There's no guarantees. We could get beat this weekend and people will say 'so much for McCloskey's training'. That's the way it goes. Measure most of the top teams and there's not too much between them in fitness. If a team gets on top they'll look fitter. It's mental as much as anything."

He knows because he can remember the bad old days. He had a season as chief stoker in the Armagh engine room back in 1998. Nobody knew there were good times around the corner. Nobody could even see a corner. Armagh hadn't won a championship game in three years, their last victory a squeaker against Fermanagh in 1994. The previous summer they went down to Tyrone by three points and had 18 listless wides.

McCloskey came in as physical trainer at the request of a friend. He was coming in off an athletics background. He took a couple of sessions and got asked back and stayed for nearly a year. Looking back it was old-fashioned-enough stuff.

Up Barnett's Hill in Belfast and down the hill again. And up and down. That's it. Keep going.

They beat Down that summer by five points. They duly lost to Derry in a provincial semi-final and McCloskey moved on, working with Joe Kernan at Crossmaglen and Dessie Ryan and Queen's and, before Kernan brought him along with him to the Armagh backroom, with Bellaghy in Derry.

Everywhere he went he seeded his brain with new ideas. He has sat in to watch everybody train from the Swans of Sydney to the Wasps of London. He reckons all but two or three Premiership soccer clubs are living in the dark ages when it comes to conditioning.

He tells you about a day which wasn't untypical but which sticks in his mind. Earlier this year he got up early one morning and went to the pool at Queen's to meet Ronan Clarke to do some water work with the player as he came off injury.

He said goodbye to Clarke and went and did his day's work. He was back in Queen's at four to do a little work with another couple of players and then he was driving south to Dublin to meet the McNultys at David Lloyd's gym to take them through their weight-training programme.

To cut down on travelling, which McCloskey believes to be a key factor in burnout, all weights work is left to the Armagh players to do themselves in gyms near their homes or jobs. McCloskey's instructions, though, mean nothing unless he travels to physically demonstrate the routines.

He stayed with the McNultys for an hour and a half and then scooted off to have a meeting with a well-known surgeon about another player's recovery from injury. He got back to Belfast at 30 minutes past midnight.

What you see in Croke Park on any given Sunday is what comes out of that commitment. McCloskey claims not to be exceptional among the new generation of GAA coaches. Perhaps he isn't but what makes him and the team he nudges and prods the most fascinating story in football right now is the simple length of that story.

He recognises he works with a set of players who are unique in the bottomlessness of their appetite. McCloskey's art has been to keep whetting their edge. He has discovered several new ways to skin cats. His job is less square-bashing sergeant than cajoler and motivator and fine-tuner.

"The way we train the team today is an awful lot different to how we trained them back in 2002. That was three years ago and we thought we were changing things a lot back then. You have to use the time you have as judiciously as possible.

"The guys are working full-time, they are travelling, they have families. There are miles on the clock for most of them. So, we say, we have two and a half hours here, what are the best ways to use it? So we intermix everything we need into a session. Skills work, defence play, forward play, warm-up, conditioning. All those things. Put it into a big mix, and try to get the best out of it in two hours."

So there are no hills now. No endless laps. No epic "keep goin' till you puke, boys" sessions. A lot of Armagh's much-vaunted strength and speed is grafted on through that gym work players do by themselves.

"A typical session? You try not to make them too typical. It depends on what we're doing. Usually a little plyometrics but a lot of the speed comes from the gym programmes. On the training field itself we use the ball in two-on-two and two-on-one situations. We're looking for speed and multi-directional movement. Any aspects of the game we take and use them. Take an accurate pass. Sprint 20 yards. Deliver an accurate pass."

Athletics coaches, he says, think about running in straight lines. As a GAA coach you can't even think in straight lines.

"Gaelic players run differently to other athletes. They run off their left foot, off their right, they have to move sideways, backwards, take a hit. So even speed work is slightly different. If they just ran in a straight line the older drills would be spot on. I use the imagination. I adapt what I have seen in basketball or in soccer.

"That means our endurance work is left. That's done through small-sided games and work with the ball. You improve communication, teamwork, skill work, positional sense and awareness and you're getting an aerobic and anaerobic input as well. It's the best use of the time we have. Ninety per cent of training is things you can use and using them as best you can. It's importantto put players under the pressure and stress they would be under in a game. Drills and bits like that are competitive. The most important piece of equipment we have is the football."

Armagh by now are a self-motivating, self-regenerating unit. McCloskey no longer performs traditional fitness tests on the squad. He sees the McGeeneys the McGranes, the McNultys and other veterans as setting the tone for the entire group. The younger players come in, they look around and absorb the ethos. The work gets done.

He weighs his players at every session, though, and worries about body-fat ratios and the other cold statistics of conditioning which he can feed back to individuals.

"For instance, just weighing a guy when he comes to training and when he's leaving for a few nights shows him how much fluid he is losing. He learns to pre-hydrate."

Part of the learning process has been discovering the effectiveness of easing off. In a macro sense, Armagh taper their training in April. In a micro sense, they taper 10 days before a game. They have done less this year and have spent more time and emphasis on recovery.

"We were aware of those aspects back in 2002 but we only trained this year one night a week till the end of February. Than two nights a week from March. We've done less. We've given the guys weekends off. Let them be with their families or whatever. Ease that stress."

McCloskey is aware of the debate (well, the criticisms) of aspects of the Armagh style. He looks on it all with polite amusement. Gaelic football always had its rogues' gallery. He knows a couple of players from Seán Boylan's team. They were the outlaws of their day. Notoriety passes.

He has a point. Armagh are no more physical or dirty than the referee on any given day will let them be. Was it ever any other way? Great teams push the envelope and push the boundaries.

"A lot of other teams have improved at the same time. The game has become faster. It was fast 10 years ago but it's faster. Guys are bigger, stronger, faster. The hits are harder. They look worse. The games are played at higher pace. Whether they are more exciting or skilful, I wouldn't want to comment.

"I think we've reached the limit in terms of the trade-off between upper-body strength and speed. Too much has been written about our upper-body strength. I think Kerry are bigger than us. We played Donegal earlier in the year and they looked bigger than us. The fitness and speed thing, we've worked on that certainly, but it's as much to do with our style of play."

Looking at tomorrow it's interesting to note that Tyrone find Armagh especially tough to score against. Ever since Ciarán McBride got their only score from play in an execrable performance back in 2000, Tyrone have been shy about scoring against the neighbours, particularly scoring goals. None in the last four meetings, just two in the seven games of their modern rivalry.

Here's a theory. Francie Bellew.

"Francie is typical of the way we aren't understood. People look at Francie and reach their own conclusions but he has the lowest body fat of any player in the Armagh team, he is as quick as anyone in the squad over five or 10 yards. He never ever gets the credit. Play the tape back and look at all the little interceptions. He'll have a hand in here, a foot in there.

"Against Laois people talk about our goal before half-time. It started down the other end of the field though. Laois were attacking. Francie stuck a foot out and intercepted a pass. He broke their move. It got picked up, a crossfield ball, Clarkey's flick, Stevie (McDonnell) puts it into the net - but it starts with the guy being quick enough to get the foot in."

Tomorrow? They'll meet in the morning and drive down on the coach. They move with the equipment and paraphernalia of a small army. Croke Park, which ironically used to have great and generally unused sunken baths in the old dressingrooms under the Cusack Stand, now has no facility to cater for the modern fad for ice baths. So Armagh's liaison man, Eamon Mackle, located two self-assembly versions and now Armagh even bring their own baths.

"If we win or draw we'll warm down in the warm-up room area. The ice baths will be ready for two or three players at a time. Maybe it's a placebo thing but the guys do feel better for it."

The dressingroom will be a catering station for recovery drinks. Armagh bring their own food for players to eat immediately after games because they'll be hanging about the dressingrooms and will need carbohydrates. When it's all done they'll head up the road to a hotel for more food, they'll use the pool.

For the following 48 hours the medical staff are on call for anyone feeling knocks or tears or injuries. Players will get massages and be encouraged to stretch. They won't train again till Wednesday. If Armagh need to go back to work they'll do so when it is most productive.

"You have to put the work in. I think, though, that for amateur players with lives outside the game we are at saturation point right now. There's nowhere else to go. Training is vastly improved but pressure on time will get to players in the end.

"There are a lot more educated coaches around and they have worked around it but it's the pressure on time, the travelling, workplace stresses, exams, having to give two or three nights, not getting the rest a full-time athlete gets. That's the difficulty."

McCloskey had noticed over the years it was the younger players coming into the squad who found the regime tougher. The older guys were a bit wiser and would have built what he calls residual strength and attained "a good training age".

"But now with the evolution of these development squads, younger players are being opened up earlier to serious training. Their bodies are used to what's expected. We're finding stronger, more stable players coming through. They've been paying attention to nutrition, psychological aspects, physical. That's all being paid attention to quicker and earlier.

"The GAA has responsibilities there too, though. A lot of clubs are going down the road of investing in weight rooms without the right consultation. The GAA has neglected this whole area. So many players are training now, everyone is keen to do well but it needs to be regulated more. There's still fellas running up the back pitch and running on hills and roads and burning themselves out and aimlessly lifting weights. They're shortening their careers, just enhancing their chances of injury."

And the next chapter beckons. He has offers on the table from across the water but like most Irishmen, he says, "leaving home is like walking with a big rubber band around your waist, you're always getting pulled back." He'd love some type of job, coaching the coaches, standardising practices, protecting players but enhancing their playing lives. For now, though, he'd love another game in September.

It's hard to imagine the stern monochrome of life without the team. Kernan the wise Buddha directing them all. Mackle looking after every logistical possibility in advance. Paddy McNamee the skip guy loading up. The feel of them being a small band of brothers moving through the summer. The comforts of the routine. He loves the arrival in the dressingroom. The medical team and all their equipment. Bags of jerseys, cones, balls, pumps, bandages, bits and pieces.

"We're a big operation. It's been worked on for a number of years. Another weekend. Our routine is set. It feels like a good, comfortable coat by now. It's one of the things you'll miss when it's over, the camaraderie, the routine, the banter, the way it builds up all summer. I know when it's over I'll miss it terribly. At some stage even this team will come to an end but when we reflect back on it, our lives have been all the richer for it."

Metaphorically. Not literally. He's noticed that on the team's legendary training trips to La Manga when the boys get a week or two of specific training, when they get fed and rested and pampered for a week, they realise this is the life, they have been tasting.

"Imagine getting money for doing this?" they say.

And McCloskey thinks of the lagging, flagging millionaires of the Premiership and smiles to himself. Perhaps this life, these days, this team are as good as it gets.